Tag Archives for tipping.
Flight attendants are getting busted for accepting gifts from passengers – after passengers have been inspired to bribe their crew by a viral TikTok trend.
Mandatory tipping of people is bad enough, mandatory tipping of machines seems to be where we’re headed. You’ll face a surcharge to cover… their health care costs? I guess that’s what they’re calling maintenance these days.
I’ve written about a Marriott that wants you to tip the front desk staff at check-in, and not even for an upgrade. They use a QR code, so the employee probably doesn’t even know right away that you’ve paid. The Hyatt Centric Boston was doing this too.
This really is spreading. Here’s Here’s the Fairfield Inn New York Midtown Manhattan Penn Station.
When you tip at a hotel, where’s the money actually going? Often, this varies by location. In some places around the world, it’s common for service charges to be considered tips and pooled to be distributed to staff. In other places you can be pretty confident that tips are going to the person intended.
But not everywhere!
A housekeeper at a Marriott hotel is complaining that all of her tips are being stolen. Guests are asked to tip, but the tips aren’t making it to the person who cleans their room. Instead, this employee says, their manager keeps going room to room to pick up the money before housekeepers enter, “she would race to get in my rooms before me to check if they were “vacant.”
This hotel does something a little bit differently – something I have never seen before. They ask guests to tip the front desk agent checking them in.
An airport lounge is supposed to be a place to refuge from the terminal. You have a quiet place to wait, some food and a place to for a complimentary drink. It’s not supposed to be a place where you get shaken down but several reports are that this is happening at United Clubs.
AirTipping is an insidious practice, and no you shouldn’t be doing it in airport lounges. Airport workers aren’t paid a ‘tipped wage’ and tipping lets employers pay less. At airline lounges, offerings are included in the price of your ticket.
You’re not allowed to bring bottles filled with water through airport security. Bottled water is often much more expensive at the airport. If you want to avoid the single use plastics, or just save money, airports frequently have filling stations.
At the Detroit airport these water filling machines solicit tips.
Before the pandemic, Hilton’s CEO Christopher Nassetta admitted that he typically doesn’t tip housekeeping. He quickly backtracked once coming under criticism. But at least now, and in Southern California, doesn’t it seem like he’s right?
Once a job hits $35 per hour with $20 per month full family health insurance coverage, should we take it out of the category where tips are expected?
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
